Immature leaves are the dominant volatile sensing organs of maize

Plants perceive herbivory induced volatiles and respond to them by upregulating their defenses. So far, the organs responsible for volatile perception remain poorly described. Here, we show that responsiveness to the herbivory induced green leaf volatile (Z)-3-hexenyl acetate (HAC) in terms of volatile emission, transcriptional regulation and jasmonate defense hormone activation is largely constrained to younger maize leaves. Older leaves are much less sensitive to HAC. In a given leaf, responsiveness to HAC is high at immature developmental stages and drops off rapidly during maturation. Responsiveness to the non-volatile elicitor ZmPep3 shows an opposite pattern, demonstrating that this form of hyposmia (i.e. decreased sense of smell) is not due to a general defect in jasmonate defense signaling in mature leaves. Neither stomatal conductance nor leaf cuticle composition explain the unresponsiveness of older leaves to HAC, suggesting perception mechanisms upstream of jasmonate signaling as driving factors. Finally, we show that hyposmia in older leaves is not restricted to HAC, and extends to the full blend of herbivory induced volatiles. In conclusion, our work identifies immature maize leaves as dominant stress volatile sensing organs. The tight spatiotemporal control of volatile perception may facilitate within-plant defense signaling to protect young leaves, and may allow plants with complex architectures to explore the dynamic odor landscapes at the outer periphery of their shoots.All data were processed with Rstudio. Necessary information for data anslysis is either documented in the R code attached or self contained in the csv files.Funding provided by: H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie ActionsCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010665Award Number: 886651Funding provided by: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001711Award Number: 210651Funding provided by: H2020 European Research CouncilCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010663Award Number: 714239Funding provided by: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001711Award Number: 200355Funding provided by: Velux StiftungCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100007214Award Number: 1231Funding provided by: Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: CANWASData were collected as described in the manuscript. All data were saved as Microsoft Excel Comma Separated Values Files